Ah, nostalgia. The thing that drives salmon to go back to the river where they were born (yeah, it's not nostalgia, but bear with me), drives people to walk 20 miles in snow to get a slice of pizza of a beloved pizzeria that's about to close down for good, and drives salmon-people to remember the good old days when the snow pizza in the river was... You get the idea.

Now. Some people take this abittoofar. Still, they are benign, right? I mean, they are ridiculous and all, but they don't harm anyone in their quest to relive their youths, childhoods, or more innocent times. So, harmless. Right? Riiiight?

WRONG!

Enter this guy. He loves that time/place. A lot. Enough, indeed, that he will do his very best to recreate it. Whether the society around him wants it recreated or not. Usually it doesn't, if only because, if it did, it would recreate said times itself. Sometimes, this guy will also be fixated on some other place, as well, and will try to recreate it on the world around him (so that, say, instead of going to Italy and trying to recreate the Roman times, they will try to recreate the Roman times in New York).

Sometimes the Evil Reactionary is an outright villain. They know that things are better for people as a whole right now, but want to revert things back because the changes didn't benefit themselves or even reduced their standing. And sometimes this character isn't even that old, but has merely internalized nostalgia for a particular period; he might even offend older people who were actually there, and who are as put off by this freakishness as the younger, "modern" people.

Compare Evil Luddite, who resents technological changes rather than societal changes. Though considering they go hand in hand, an overlap is possible. This trope may appear unintentionally in a reactionary fantasy where the protagonist comes across as a Designated Hero. See also Still Fighting The Civil War, which occurs when a character is willing to admit that most things have changed, but a particular sociopolitical issue that most people have put behind them is still relevant. May be what a former hero becomes if the progress of society is too great since the former hero's time in the case of Outdated Hero vs. Improved Society.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

The world of One Piece is strongly hinted at to be one where such forces, now known as the World Government, had become victorious. The "Void Century" refers to a hundred years of the world's history that has seemingly gone missing. Bits and pieces of what happened during this time have popped up as the series has gone on, including the existence of robot armies, space travel, and technological superweapons. (By contrast, One Piece's modern day weaponry is restricted to cannons, swords, and flintlock pistols, and strongly resembles the 17th and 18th century days of high seas piracy.) The World Government actively hunts down and kills anyone with knowledge of the Void Century, which is why Nico Robin, an Adventurer Archaeologist who can read the Poneglyphs said knowledge is stored upon, has a price on her head.

Of course, it's very possible that the World Government kept some of this technology for their own use. (It would likely be impossible to build structures like Impel Down with 21st Century equipment, much less 18th; how it was done was never explained.) If this is true, it would make whoever enacted the change a Straw Hypocrite at best.

There was a Batman issue where a Mad Bomber was demolishing newer skyscrapers in order to restore Gotham's '30s-era skyline. note Which wouldn't necessarily work out for him, since other skycrapers have probably been torn down since then.

In the Marvel Universe, the Royalist Forces of America are a terrorist organisation (whose leaders are descended from Revolutionary War loyalists) who wish to dissolve America's democracy and re-institute a class system.

The Runaways once faced an old man who unleashed a monster on Los Angeles with the power to revert the city to the way it was when his late wife was still alive.

Literature

In the Young Bond novel Blood Fever, Bond fights a secret society dedicated to recreating the Roman Empire.

In Men at Arms, Edward D'Eath wants to bring Ankh-Morpork back to the days of aristocracy.

Another Discworld example is the villain in "The Fifth Elephant", who tries to force the new king of the dwarves of Überwald into civil war because they view him as too sympathetic to modern mores. They continue to be major villains until Thud!where they try to destroy evidence that the battle of Koom Valley was an attempt to end the dwarf/troll war and Raising Steam, where they complete the transtition into Islamic terrorist expies.

Church, especially the Roman Catholic Church, was being almost universally depicted as this in Soviet educational and edutainment literature, ruthlessly persecuting scientists and repressing new ideas to retain their tyrannical power. Not that they didn't actually engage in this, but the portrayals are grossly exaggerated with sweeping generalizations running rampant.

The Lord of the Rings himself, Sauron, wanted to restore Arda to the state it had existed in before his former master Morgoth corrupted it.

General Rumford in Victoria is a heroic example: a political general and Chief of Staff in a mid-21st century state whose take on life, the Universe and everything is best described as that of an early 19th century conservative (atheists should lose their citizenship, women should stay in the kitchen, the French Revolution was pure Bolshevism, etc.). He also expends tremendous effort imposing these same values on his country, the Northern Confederation. His craziness actually benefits his nation, however, since the archaic stratagems he employs are never anticipated by the Confederation's modernist, high-tech enemies.

Live Action Television

In Game of Thrones, the Sons of the Harpy are a terrorist organization led by aristocratic former slave owners who want to bring back slavery after it is abolished by Daenerys Targaryen.

Some of Daenerys' supporters would qualify as well, since they imagine that restoring House Targaryen to the throne will solve all or most of Westeros' many problems.

This is the shtick (overlapping with Evil Luddite) of the villain Retrograde in the Champions sourcebook High Tech Enemies. His power allows him to transform high-tech items into low-tech, non-functioning equivalents, such as transforming a suit of powered armour into a suit of medieval knight's armour.

The Guiding Hand of Feng Shui are this at their absolute worst. They want to return China to an era of "enlightenment", and utterly despise modern technology and thinking.

Mad Mod, from Teen Titans, wants to impose England on everyone else. Specifically, a historical, romanticized England. He also wants to reclaim America for England. As of this writing, there's been no word from Lizzie on whether or not they will accept it.

The Pastmaster from SWAT Kats really misses the Dark Ages. So much so that in his debut he tried to bring them back in the present day. The Swat Kats foiled him. In another episode, he decided to just go back in time to the Dark Ages and take over. The Swat Kats foiled him. Eventually, he suffered Motive Decay and messed with the originally happy future of Megakat City and turned it into a Bad Future just to spite the Swat Kats. The Swat Kats foiled him.

On The Simpsons, Mr. Burns is a cross between this and a clueless Disco Dan insomuch as he doesn't even know about many

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy